Tale of Rana Sanaullah during Musharraf era

ISLAMABAD: The bitter memories of dreaded dungeon, the Attock Fort, where Nawaz Sharif, Ishaq Dar, Khawaja Asif and many other leaders of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) were kept during Pervez Musharraf’s martial law, and the torture perpetrated on Rana Sanaullah, echoed in the Supreme Court during hearing on the offshore companies and London apartments.

“Ishaq Dar was told that he would not be allowed to walk out of the Attock Fort if he did not give the confessional statement (against the Sharif family),” his lawyer Shahid Hamid told Justice Asif Saeed Khosa led five-member bench.

Khawaja Asif, now the defence minister, who is present in the courtroom, can be asked how prisoners were kept in the Attock Fort, he stated while making the point that conditions were always most awful in this jail for the inmates, especially political figures.

Obviously, political detainees were shifted to the high security Attock Fort to break their will and force them into submitting to what they were told to admit. After the imposition of martial law on October 12, 1999, a large number of Leaguers were moved to this most frightening place.

The worst beating that Rana Sanaullah, now Punjab Law Minister, in which his hairs and eyebrows were also sheared,had received during the dictatorial rule was also referred to by Shahid Hamid just to establish that the confessional statement extracted from Ishaq Dar was under duress and involuntary.

The Supreme Court will indeed judge the implication and bearing of this confession and how far it will have any negative or positive effect on the case against the premier and his children. But it is undeniable that extreme coercive methods were employed to extort confessions during the military rule. An apt reference may also be made about making Masood Mehmood, Director General of the notorious Federal Security Force, approver in the murder case against former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto during Ziaul Haq’s martial law.

The tactics that the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) used during Musharraf’s time are no secret. Particularly when it came to politicians, the so called anti-graft agency was unusually cruel and inhuman. It basically served as a tool of the regime to change loyalties of politicians, having a great role in the formation of the king’s party, the PML-Q. Everyone who fell in line was given a clean chit. This is a sad part of the history that can’t be erased.

However, there were politicians like Khawaja Asif, who did not surrender despite being detained in the Attock Fort for a long time. He and Ishaq Dar had been transported to this prison in a cage only to teach them a lesson and intimidate them into giving in.

In a report, Rana Sanaullah narrated his ordeal. “After October 12, we were like a leaderless crowd. Nobody knew what had happened and what had to be done. People were turning to the senior party leadership. At that time, senior party leaders were really only the Chaudhrys and a few people like Zulfiqar Ali Khosa. In November, 1999 when party members finally got together, I said, ‘We must come out to the streets. Such a big party, such a big mandate, and there is not a single man willing to protest?’”

“The next day, I was at home in Faisalabad. The police and agencies raided my house, arrested me and brought me to Lahore. I was blindfolded, my hands tied behind my back. They hung me and began to systematically beat me. The blood completely soaked my clothes. I was being constantly abused; they told me I had spoken out against the establishment.”

Continuing he said: “I was thrown into a cell and presented in court after 16 days. They accused me of distributing anti-establishment pamphlets in Ghalib Market, Lahore. I couldn’t even believe what I was reading. Even now, I often ask them, ‘who wrote those treacherous pamphlets? It certainly wasn’t me, so perhaps it was you.’ They charged me with 124A - waging war against the government - and threw me into jail. It wasn’t until three months later that I was released by the court.”

“The madness went on. We’d be caught and released on and off. The same people who abandoned us then are back with us now, sitting next to me in the cabinet. But believe me, in those days, there was no one. Between 12th October and April 2000, we were almost completely alone. It was only when Mian Nawaz Sharif was given the life sentence instead of death that people started cautiously coming back. Perhaps in the history of the world, no courtroom had ever erupted in such rejoicing at the awarding of a life sentence. We congratulated Begum Kulsoom Nawaz. It was the hope we needed.”

Rana Sanaulah also said: “I was elected member of the Punjab Assembly in the 2002 elections. During a heated debate in the House in 2003, I jokingly said, ‘What do movers and shakers, during the Musharraf period, know about making laws?’ To them, I had crossed a line. On the night of 8th March, 2003, I was picked up by the agencies and taken to an agency’s office in Faisalabad. For hours, I was tortured. They cut me and rubbed petrol in my wounds, beat me, shaved off my head, my eyebrows, my face. When I passed out from all the pain, I was thrown onto a bypass on the motorway. When I regained consciousness in the early hours of the morning, I found a nearby petrol station, called home and was picked up.”